Equipment and facilities often have track-mounted doors. In specialized equipment and facilities, doorway tracks may not be straight, may fold away, or may have gaps. Asymmetrical movement or loading may cause such track-mounted doors to bind or jam. Historically, track-mounted doors run on rollers. In more complicated applications pairs of rollers that may be mounted on pivots are sometimes utilized. However, doors with tab or ear mounted guides or rollers may be subject to binding or jamming when the door or other object being translated along the track is forced into a skew position relative to the tracks.
In special applications, tracks for doorways sometimes fold away or are segmented. These tracks may have gaps that door guide mechanisms must cross. Such track gaps create additional conditions where asymmetric loading or movement of the door or object being translated may cause binding or jamming. Aircraft often utilize complex doorway tracks for access doors. These doors are latched to the fuselage when closed, but must move into the aircraft when opened. The doorway tracks are sometimes folded away for access to equipment in the aircraft being serviced. Asymmetric loadings by hand operation of access doors can cause binding or jamming of the door mechanisms.
FIG. 1A is an isometric view of an example electronic/equipment bay 5 of an aircraft (not shown). A door 10 rides on fixed tracks 9 that are attached to an aircraft's fuselage, and rides on folding tracks 8 within the aircraft as the door 10 is opened and lifted within the aircraft. The folding tracks 8 in this embodiment are integrated into folding track supports 7, which pivot out of the way after the door 10 has been translated along the tracks, and opened thereby providing access to electronic and electrical equipment in the bay 5. In the prior art example shown in FIG. 1A, the door 10 rides along the fixed tracks 9 and the moveable tracks 8 utilizing three sets of dual rollers 12. These dual rollers 12 include a linked pair of wheels on a rotating mount (not shown). The mount can rotate allowing the pair of wheels to follow curved tracks, and aids the wheels in bridging gaps in the track. The folding track supports 7 can introduce a small gap between the moveable tracks 8 and the fixed tracks 9. The door 10 is unlatched and lifted along the fixed tracks 9, across gaps in the track (not shown), and up and out of the way to the side along the movable tracks 8 on the folding track supports 7. This permits maintenance access to the equipment in the bay 5. It will be appreciated that hand opening of the door 10 can place asymmetrical loads and movement on the door 10 causing the door 10 to jam.
Therefore, a need exists for a glide mechanism for door operation, and for translating other objects along tracks, that is more jam and binding resistant than current systems.